this blog is the continuation of a genuine mystical tradition, unless you get in daily contemplative time and abstain to a significant degree from "entertainment" then you are just wasting your time and mine !

Abandoning normative ethics leads to moral nihilism. We need an ethics that tells people how they'd ought to behave. You can't just abandon all attempts to bridge the "is-ought" gap, otherwise you're left with undesirable positions. If you reduce all ethics to being answered on the personal level, then you're left with moral relativism rather than moral nihilism. Moral relativism is just as ridiculous in that many atrocious acts can be justified. "Moral relativism is the view that ethical standards, morality, and positions of right or wrong are culturally based and therefore subject to a person's individual choice. We can all decide what is right for ourselves."

I like Schopenhauer's view:

"Schopenhauer regards 'normative ethics', the attempt to establish the fundamental principle or principles of morality over which Kant laboured so long and hard, as a non-discipline since it is simple common sense. The supreme principle of morality, as everyone knows, is just 'harm no one; on the contrary help everyone as much as you can" (BM:69).

Schopenhauer says that egoistic action is not always 'wrong (Unrecht)'. Provided it does not cause harm to others it is 'right'. On the other hand, given the competitive situation in which we find ourselves, egoistic action is, inevitably, very often wrong. It is, indeed, the sole source of wrongdoing. The sole source of wrong-doing, in other words, is the inflicting of harm on others, 'denying' their wills, in the course of 'asserting' one's own (WR I: 334)."

Source: http://tinyurl.com/jaroqk7

However, one needs a stronger way to justify such a negative utilitarianism, which is why I've argued for rebirth after dying. In truth, I don't believe or disbelieve it, but I used it to push for my agendas.

I agree attention and cognitive faculties emerge from brain processing. I am a strong emergentist. I definitely don't like weak emergentism. The issue with explaining explicit memory facades as emerging from brain activity is that, what is the nature of explicit memory when it is not persistently arising? If explicit memory has a degree of independence from brain activity, then I think that could support rebirth. Can the qualitative potentialities of explicit memory in its various forms arising from biology be said to pre-exist their temporal appearances? If not, how else can one explain a causal relation of the unique qualities arising from explicit meory in a way accessible to brain activity? What is the nature of declarative memory in relation to neural activity, what is its encodable field? This is hard to explain.

One way to hypothetically falsify my hypothesis of explicit memory having a degree of independence from brain activity is in the future we find a way to watch the mesoscopic dynamics of someone's healthy brain, across all columns and circuits, in real time and have a computer analyze it. Then in another brain growing in a kind of stem cell kit, we would also have nanobots that can traverse glia cells (lol doubt this) that can get to neurons and either inhibit or excite them at key points in order to make the rhythmic dynamical system of the brain growing in the stem cell kit mimic the healthy brain simulation. The way the nanobot functions would be based off the computer database of simulations of the real-time mesoscopic dynamics of the human growing and experiencing the world through its Post-Natal days. Then we transplant the growing brain into another medium in which we can determine whether it is conscious or not. However, this is most likely impossible. DTI, fMRIs, EEGs, electrode or multi-electrode stimulation, etc. all of that is primitive to what I'm proposing.

I predict the transplanted brain in the other medium will not have any refined, specific explicit memories. This is because there is some kind of property in external phenomena, perhaps involving wave-function collapse, that is necessary to sense external world in working memory, and also for the brain to consolidate and then retrieve from the encodable field in the world**. David Chalmers hypothesizes about something akin to this here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIBT6E2GtjA

If explicit memory has a degree of independence from brain activity, then the Lankavatara Sutra's explanation of storehouse consciousness is true: karmic residues in the storehouse consciousness (alayavijnana) leave seeds (bija) to cause the formation of new volitional formations (sankhara), bridging two existences, if not purified.

Whatever, I like Schopenhauer's ethics: negative utilitarianism and antinatalism. Last thing I'm going to do is bring children into this life of pain and misery. If rebirth or a heaven and hell aren't true, then I don't value compassion beyond what serves my own needs. I'd be more like a Max Stirner. I've dealt with too much shit to have anymore empathy in my heart for man, and the only thing that prevents me from being a greedy bastard are views like avoiding hell or avoiding negative rebirth. Take those away and I don't care about being a "good" person anymore. However, I'm not sick enough to become a Marquis de Sade. I'd just be more Stirner'ish who wasn't nearly as messed up.

I can't figure Zephyr out... sometimes he reads like an intentional troll. Like, how can "I got my scuba diving license and went on my first 4 dives" be a reply to someone who just accused him of not occupying himself with himself? On the one hand, Zephyr is very bright etc. has the focus and intelligence to read scientific articles I never could, on the other, he seems as stupid as an automaton! Quite a funny walking contradiction supposing he's not a troll!

The key to understanding reincarnation is to separate it from the nonsense of the Buddhists, the idea that it is an assembling of disassembled parts, and the nonsense of the Greeks, specifically the Pythagoreans, who thought it's as if a soul jumps from a body to another "physically", as it were. To understand true reincarnation one has to see the Universe does not "come" from a physical Big Bang that was a historical event. Instead, it emanates from the Self - from my Self. So reincarnation is not a soul jumping from a body to another; instead, it is the Universe exploding, expanding, evolving, coagulating, from the Self; and then retracting back into the Self, which reabsorbs it. This is a "solipsistic" version of reincarnation, which is the only one that makes sense, but it cannot be empirically proven, obviously! If one is graced with a single experience in contemplation whereby the world disappears (is reabsorbed into the Self) then one is given the experience which verifies this process. It can happen while one is still alive! "Incarnation" really means that the true Self puts an avatar, a puppet there, as a protagonist in the theatre of his illusory play. (This is also the inner meaning of Christianity I think! Christians are too stupid to understand Christ really refers to them, their lives: we are all "Christs"/avatars sent by our true Self (God) to carry the cross until we can recognize the unity between our individuality and our universality "on the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit" to paraphrase Hegel!)

(As a metaphor / analogy you can think of each life-cycle as a dream the Self is having. It is all the same Person; but multiple dreams. We can have multiple dreams in a single night. In one dream, I am this or that person, Zakaj or Zephyr, in another I am the Seventh Patriarch, in the third dream I am a businessman, and then a hermit, and then an attractive woman, etc. They seem to follow one another as if chronologically but they really don't (hence I think the whole question of quantum reversibility is irrelevant to this)... in the end the dreamer wakes up and realizes nothing was actually going on... the lives, the dreams, the protagonists, it was all Him!)

(Both look very interesting; I'll need more time to evaluate the philosopher but Titor made a very good first impression on me! As I look at some of his painting, who am I who is looking? The paintings are a big question mark on the person looking at the painting itself ... it is as if they posit you as God looking at moments / memories of the process of Creation ... Quite amazing, but this is only my interpretation. )

i saw people making posts recommending this show but i'm too narrow minded about things nowadays. my thinking is that it's just another bullshit cartoon with nothing to offer... just another thing for retards to jizz over.

but yeah i'm still not gonna check it out.. well maybe..

also it's been pretty warm this year. i saw this beautiful sunset a few days back, intense orange mixed with the clouds and you could still see the blue sky... it was weird. wish i took a photo because i'm pretty bad at describing things.

"i saw people making posts recommending this show but i'm too narrow minded about things nowadays. my thinking is that it's just another bullshit cartoon with nothing to offer... just another thing for retards to jizz over.

but yeah i'm still not gonna check it out.. well maybe..

also it's been pretty warm this year. i saw this beautiful sunset a few days back, intense orange mixed with the clouds and you could still see the blue sky... it was weird. wish i took a photo because i'm pretty bad at describing things."

my reply

yeah its so fucked it burnt my mind, since sepehr appears to be watching this sort of crap its no wonder he keeps regressing, same for his fixation with anime !